Virtual Box – How to Install & Configure in openSUSE

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

VirtualBox was recently taken over by Sun Microsystems and is available as Sun xVM VirtualBox. The latest stable version of VirtualBox is Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6.

Install virtualBox in openSUSE

Installation of VirtualBox in openSUSE is made easy through the 1-click installation.

This will download the YMP file and open it automatically with YaST Package Manager. The fist screen will prompt you to add the VirtualBox Repositories & openSUSE update repositories. Click Next.

In the next Sofwtare installation window, click Next. And, again click next on the Summary window which informs of you of the addition of repositories and the installation of VirtualBox software. This will download and the repositories, then install VirtualBox software and required dependencies including the kernel module for VirtualBox (virtualbox-ose-kmp-default). Click “Finish” in the final installtion window.

Add Additional Packages

You may also install the additional packages virtualbox-ose-guest-tools xorg-x11-driver-virtualbox-ose for video and mouse drivers for Xorg X11

To install additional packages,

From Computer, click Install Software and search for virtualbox. This should showup the above packages, select the packages and click Accept to install the packages. That should install all the required packages.

Add user to vboxusers group

If you want to run Virtualbox as a non-root user then you need to add the required users to the group “vboxusers”. The ownership info can be found in

To add user to the group, click Computer – YaST – Security and Users – User and Group Management.
Select the user and click Edit and select the “Details” tab, under additional groups, select “vboxuser” and click OK and click Finish.

Failing to add the user to the group may result in the following error

The VirtualBox kernel driver is not accessible to the current user. Make sure that the user has write permissions for /dev/vboxdrv by adding them to the vboxusers groups. You will need to logout for the change to take effect..
VBox status code: -1909 (VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_ACCESSIBLE).

Start VirtualBox

VirtualBox should be available under Applications – System as VirtualBox OSE.
Starting VirtualBox for the first time will request you to register using Name and email address. Once registered, will lead you to the default VirtualBox Console window. From here you can control the Virtual machines, Virtual Disks, Edit settings of Virtual machines including adding/removing CDROM/images, changing network settings like NAT, memory Hard disk etc.
Creating New Virtual machine

To create a new Virtual Machine, click New. This will start the wizard, click Next.

Enter the name for the Virtual machine and select the OS type. Support operating System types include windows, Linux 32/64/intel/amd, popular Linux distributions, Solaris, openSUSE and BSDs. here we choose openSUSE as the type of OS.

Set the memory size for the Virtual machine and click Next.

In the next window, click New to create a new Hard Disk (if you copied or already created a Virtual Disk then you may choose to select the disk rather than creating a new one) and click Add. This will start the Virtual Disk wizard. Select the disk type. The type is purely based on your Disk space availability. If you have lots of space then can choose “Fixed-Size image”. This will create a Disk image file with a set size and can improve performance. Alternatively, choosing a Dynamic Expaning image” holds a small amount of local disk space and expands as more space is claimed by the guest OS. We choose a “Dynamic” image here. Enter the image name and set the size of the disk, click Next and Finish. This adds the new disk image.

Click Next and Finish on the Virtual machine Wizard to complete adding the Virtual Machine.

To change any of the settings of the VM, click settings and select the relevant option to change it accordingly. For instance, if you wish to change from NAT interface (NATs its IP address to the host IP) to Host interface (connects to the local subnet of the host using the host interface).

When you start the Virtual Machine, again comes a one time wizard to install and OS on your VM. This is optional. Click Next, Choose between CDROM/Floopy addition option and then CDROM or ISO image if CDROM is selected and click Next and click Finish.

The one click install for virtualbox does not work for me.
It gives a message box saying ” an error occurred while trying to initializing the software repository
Details: OpenSUSE 11.0 update: Valid metedata not found at specified (URL)s history
– cannot determine type of repository openSUSE 11.0:update.
I am using opensuse 11.0 x64 version which is fully up to date with auto updater.
I am not aware of anything that doesn’t work correctly on my set, ie email web browsing other new program installs etc.

for X64 boxes just do the install by adding the virtualbox repository then installing from YAST. the instructions on this site still work.
for mine I had to do a reboot before starting the virtual machine.
after that all was fine.

i got the same error on my suse 11.0 64 bits. what i did is de-selected the second repository which it asks to add to repository by default. so i left only first link and installed successfully. the error is in the second link, it can not be added to the main repository list (for some reason), whats why u get error.

I am running openSUSE 11.0 and I got the same error message. I think it is because the link is bad or because an entry in the repository for openSUSE 11.0 Updates is already present. I just unchecked the second repository as I already had an update repository of openSUSE 11.0 in the YaST Software Repositories.

I will like someone to PLEASE assist me with instructions on how to use the Xen Virtualization feature in openSUSE 11.0. I already installed and included all necessary libraries, plugins, and programs to get the application working. But my big problem is that I am new to this whole Linux experience and learning very fast. I love openSUSE but I can’t seem to figure out how exactly do I get to login to my desktop after booting into the Xen virtual machine option from the Boot Loader Menu that takes you to a command prompt cause that’s all that I’m getting. I don’t know if I am still not doing something right. I keep getting an error message about Xen not being loaded or started.

VirtualBox is quite sensitive to how it is installed. And generally the instructions above are outdated by the new VirtualBox offering.

Before starting installation, it may be sensible to make sure everything is removed from the last failed install. Run rm -r .Vir* and then rm -r .vir* from the home folder of any user who has installed an older version – including root!

Get the latest VirtualBox (currently 2.1.2) from virtualbox.org. Forget the OSE offerings from SuSE. Download the file into an empty folder. Use Yast to add the folder to the Yast repository. Then choose ManageSoftware from Yast and search for VirtualBox and install the 2.1.2 version (or the latest) and nothing else. DO NOT install VirtualBox by right mouseclicking the rpm and choosing ‘install software’; neither run rpm -i VirtualBox.rpm; the effects should be the same but they are not. Yast completes and automatically adds the user to vboxusers group and does other housekeeping. You should now be able to run VirtualBox from the menu or command line by typing VirtualBox.